The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.
This solemn reseveration refers to what precedes, and also what follows, including the revelation, 2 Corinthians 12:1-21, which is in beautiful contrast with the preceding infirmities. The persecution at Damascus was the first. He had no human witness of it to adduce, being a fact that happened long before, and was known to few (cf. Galatians 1:20): he therefore subjoins it separately. 'In Damascus also, before any of these trials, I had a narrow escape, when the ethnarch guarded the city of the Damascenes.' This accounts for the tautology. The ethnarch did it to please the Jews, who, in Acts 9:24, are said to have 'watched the gates day, and night to kill Paul.'